(no subject)
(A belated) thank you, sweet_ali, for the virtual hearts, and thanks to anonymous for the chocolates. What a lovely surprise.
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Roundup of this week's TV:
Jericho 2.01 - "Reconstructon"
Truly, it would not be Jericho without the Moment of Heartwarming Affirmation of Values, which in this episode came when Jake realized that hotheaded revenge was just going to get them killed, and managed to keep Eric and the other townsmen from getting killed. But there was a neat edge to Jake's epiphany, after his conversation with Hawkins: he might not be renouncing vengeance so much as taking Hawkins' advice to bide his time and be smarter about it. And through Jake, we see the ways the town isn't coming back from where it has been; it lost a lot of people, and New Bern feels the same, and without the thin veneer of military control over the area, things would quickly fall apart again.
Expanding the show's horizons is an interesting writing choice; on the one hand, the claustrophobia and isolation in the first season--once the show really started embracing the implications--was one of its dramatic cornerstones. On the other hand, I'm not sure how long it could have been sustained. At the beginning of last season, military rule, those resources and that order, would have been a relief. Since then, though, we've had a chance to see how badly isolated fiefdoms can be perverted by ruthless and ambitious men; the new "federal" government is just a bigger fiefdom. And I like the distinction between the military commander, Beck, who is clearly trying to restore order, and the new "president" who commands him, and whose motives are quite a bit more nebulous. (It is also a nice touch that Beck is applying the counterinsurgency tactics he learned in Afghanistan to warring towns in the American heartland, that he's shrewd, that he identifies local leaders and tries to coopt the positive forces and neutralize the negative ones without setting a match to the powder keg, trying to elevate Jake, removing Constantino.)
There are lots of signals that there's something rotten at the core of the new government--the propaganda film, the way other states are resisting it until convinced to throw their lot in with the biggest strongman, but especially the way it's got an agency (a private contractor, by the looks of it) out there getting farmers, and presumably the holders of other resources, to sign away shares of what they produce. Without a cash economy, what Stanley agreed to was a form of federal sharecropping.
Stanley and Mimi should be cloying and sick-making, and yet they are not. I don't understand how that works, at all. Darcy and Robert Hawkins, on the other hand, make a wonderful team. He's finally letting her in, and she's not sure she likes what she sees of his world, but now it's her world too, and she has his back. Hawkins has been extremely shrewd so far, but he's also tired, and getting more desperate, and I worry that his long-lost fellow agent is going to turn on him.
Babylon 5 1.05 - "Parliament of Dreams"
I feel like my grip on G'Kar is slippery at this point, because on the one hand, he's been used quite often as comic relief--almost childishly impatient with his diplomatic duties, overlarge of emotion. In no universe does waving a pair of panties around to emphasize your points actually help your argument. (I am secretly working on a half-facetious theory that the Babylon Project is a dumping ground for bad diplomats that would otherwise be doing real damage in real postings; it doesn't fit with the overt canon, but Londo and G'Kar are both HORRIBLE at this, loud and impetuous and willing to drop official duties on any flimsy excuse.) On the other hand, this episode illustrates that his paranoid worldview is based in experience, when we learn that internal Narn politics are complicated and full of backstabbings and betrayals, and probably not that different, now that there's a lot of power at stake, from Centauri politics. The resolution of the assassin plot was pretty over the top, but in a fun way; Na'Toth enjoyed kicking the crap out of G'Kar so much, and who could really blame her? But she figured out what was going on really quickly, and moved to solve the problem, and G'Kar caught on just as quickly what she was doing, and let her. (And both of them were cheerfully vindictive and bloodthirsty in arranging the assassin's fate; they aren't going to kill him themselves, but are quite happy to arrange for him to be killed by his own rules.) For all of the clunky dialog, the show does not make characters, and the audience, waste too much time with petty misunderstandings and crosstalk between characters, so even if they often don't talk the way regular people do, they react to cues and information in a way that seems real. The political intrigue and eventual dispatch of the assassin was a nice contrast to the coming together of religions in a spirit of tolerance and education that was happening in the background.
Speaking of clunky dialog, the dinner conversation between Sinclair and Catherine was PAINFUL. On the other hand, their goodbye had me convinced that she was doomed, that she was getting on that outbound craft never to be heard from again, except in the message that informed Sinclair of her inevitable and tragic death, so that the Eyebrows could be sad. (We all discovered that expressing what's going on with Sinclair in terms of his eyebrows makes his scenes a lot more fun to watch. The Eyebrows are confused! The Eyebrows are skeptical. The Eyebrows are concerned. And so forth.)
I like Na'Toth and think she makes a nice, practical foil for G'Kar's tendency toward dramatics, but just on principle, I take the opportunity to hiss in Julie Caitlin Brown's general direction.
Babylon 5 1.06 - "Mind War"
Walter Koenig! One of the things I liked best about the first (I think?) episode was Ivanova talking about her mother's fate, so it was pleasing to see the hints of that alternate authority structure, the Psi Corps, getting fleshed out. (Apparently, though, the official symbol of the official psychic is a makeup trowel? So much face paint on all of them.) The chain of command once Bester came on board was interesting; Sinclair, though commander of the station, wasn't able to interfere with a matter that involved psychics or potential psychics. Operating in parallel to, rather than under, other kinds of authority, seems to give the Psi Corps a particularly wide reach, and a particularly invasive kind of power. And now we learn that, through blackmail and manipulation, they are setting themselves up as the real power on Earth. Between the Psi Corps and the seeming preeminence of megacorporations, one wonders who's pulling the strings of civil authority on Earth.
In the meantime, I continued to believe Catherine was a goner, and she continued to survive, confounding my expectations. G'Kar's meditation, at the end, about the mysteries of the universe, and the things out there to which we are like ants, was absolutely marvelous; I like his philosophical side. And Garibaldi is growing on me in surprising ways, because he's in some ways a big, messy personality, but he's also really good at his job, and competence is the way to my heart.
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Instead of doing the reading I wanted to do last night, I passed out by ten... so I woke up at 6. Perfect opportunity to hit Trader Joe's right when they open and avoid the weekend madness, right? And I would have gotten away with being all on top of things if I'd eaten breakfast first. Instead, I was just a starving person standing with a shopping cart in the middle of a Trader Joe's at 10am, and we know how this story ends.
* * * * *
Roundup of this week's TV:
Jericho 2.01 - "Reconstructon"
Truly, it would not be Jericho without the Moment of Heartwarming Affirmation of Values, which in this episode came when Jake realized that hotheaded revenge was just going to get them killed, and managed to keep Eric and the other townsmen from getting killed. But there was a neat edge to Jake's epiphany, after his conversation with Hawkins: he might not be renouncing vengeance so much as taking Hawkins' advice to bide his time and be smarter about it. And through Jake, we see the ways the town isn't coming back from where it has been; it lost a lot of people, and New Bern feels the same, and without the thin veneer of military control over the area, things would quickly fall apart again.
Expanding the show's horizons is an interesting writing choice; on the one hand, the claustrophobia and isolation in the first season--once the show really started embracing the implications--was one of its dramatic cornerstones. On the other hand, I'm not sure how long it could have been sustained. At the beginning of last season, military rule, those resources and that order, would have been a relief. Since then, though, we've had a chance to see how badly isolated fiefdoms can be perverted by ruthless and ambitious men; the new "federal" government is just a bigger fiefdom. And I like the distinction between the military commander, Beck, who is clearly trying to restore order, and the new "president" who commands him, and whose motives are quite a bit more nebulous. (It is also a nice touch that Beck is applying the counterinsurgency tactics he learned in Afghanistan to warring towns in the American heartland, that he's shrewd, that he identifies local leaders and tries to coopt the positive forces and neutralize the negative ones without setting a match to the powder keg, trying to elevate Jake, removing Constantino.)
There are lots of signals that there's something rotten at the core of the new government--the propaganda film, the way other states are resisting it until convinced to throw their lot in with the biggest strongman, but especially the way it's got an agency (a private contractor, by the looks of it) out there getting farmers, and presumably the holders of other resources, to sign away shares of what they produce. Without a cash economy, what Stanley agreed to was a form of federal sharecropping.
Stanley and Mimi should be cloying and sick-making, and yet they are not. I don't understand how that works, at all. Darcy and Robert Hawkins, on the other hand, make a wonderful team. He's finally letting her in, and she's not sure she likes what she sees of his world, but now it's her world too, and she has his back. Hawkins has been extremely shrewd so far, but he's also tired, and getting more desperate, and I worry that his long-lost fellow agent is going to turn on him.
Babylon 5 1.05 - "Parliament of Dreams"
I feel like my grip on G'Kar is slippery at this point, because on the one hand, he's been used quite often as comic relief--almost childishly impatient with his diplomatic duties, overlarge of emotion. In no universe does waving a pair of panties around to emphasize your points actually help your argument. (I am secretly working on a half-facetious theory that the Babylon Project is a dumping ground for bad diplomats that would otherwise be doing real damage in real postings; it doesn't fit with the overt canon, but Londo and G'Kar are both HORRIBLE at this, loud and impetuous and willing to drop official duties on any flimsy excuse.) On the other hand, this episode illustrates that his paranoid worldview is based in experience, when we learn that internal Narn politics are complicated and full of backstabbings and betrayals, and probably not that different, now that there's a lot of power at stake, from Centauri politics. The resolution of the assassin plot was pretty over the top, but in a fun way; Na'Toth enjoyed kicking the crap out of G'Kar so much, and who could really blame her? But she figured out what was going on really quickly, and moved to solve the problem, and G'Kar caught on just as quickly what she was doing, and let her. (And both of them were cheerfully vindictive and bloodthirsty in arranging the assassin's fate; they aren't going to kill him themselves, but are quite happy to arrange for him to be killed by his own rules.) For all of the clunky dialog, the show does not make characters, and the audience, waste too much time with petty misunderstandings and crosstalk between characters, so even if they often don't talk the way regular people do, they react to cues and information in a way that seems real. The political intrigue and eventual dispatch of the assassin was a nice contrast to the coming together of religions in a spirit of tolerance and education that was happening in the background.
Speaking of clunky dialog, the dinner conversation between Sinclair and Catherine was PAINFUL. On the other hand, their goodbye had me convinced that she was doomed, that she was getting on that outbound craft never to be heard from again, except in the message that informed Sinclair of her inevitable and tragic death, so that the Eyebrows could be sad. (We all discovered that expressing what's going on with Sinclair in terms of his eyebrows makes his scenes a lot more fun to watch. The Eyebrows are confused! The Eyebrows are skeptical. The Eyebrows are concerned. And so forth.)
I like Na'Toth and think she makes a nice, practical foil for G'Kar's tendency toward dramatics, but just on principle, I take the opportunity to hiss in Julie Caitlin Brown's general direction.
Babylon 5 1.06 - "Mind War"
Walter Koenig! One of the things I liked best about the first (I think?) episode was Ivanova talking about her mother's fate, so it was pleasing to see the hints of that alternate authority structure, the Psi Corps, getting fleshed out. (Apparently, though, the official symbol of the official psychic is a makeup trowel? So much face paint on all of them.) The chain of command once Bester came on board was interesting; Sinclair, though commander of the station, wasn't able to interfere with a matter that involved psychics or potential psychics. Operating in parallel to, rather than under, other kinds of authority, seems to give the Psi Corps a particularly wide reach, and a particularly invasive kind of power. And now we learn that, through blackmail and manipulation, they are setting themselves up as the real power on Earth. Between the Psi Corps and the seeming preeminence of megacorporations, one wonders who's pulling the strings of civil authority on Earth.
In the meantime, I continued to believe Catherine was a goner, and she continued to survive, confounding my expectations. G'Kar's meditation, at the end, about the mysteries of the universe, and the things out there to which we are like ants, was absolutely marvelous; I like his philosophical side. And Garibaldi is growing on me in surprising ways, because he's in some ways a big, messy personality, but he's also really good at his job, and competence is the way to my heart.
* * * * *
Instead of doing the reading I wanted to do last night, I passed out by ten... so I woke up at 6. Perfect opportunity to hit Trader Joe's right when they open and avoid the weekend madness, right? And I would have gotten away with being all on top of things if I'd eaten breakfast first. Instead, I was just a starving person standing with a shopping cart in the middle of a Trader Joe's at 10am, and we know how this story ends.